The overconfidence effect in social prediction.

In 5 studies with overlapping designs and intents, Ss predicted a specific peer's responses to a variety of stimulus situations, each of which offered a pair of mutually exclusive and exhaustive response alternatives. Each prediction was accompanied by a subjective probability estimate reflecting the Ss' confidence in its accuracy—a measure validated in Study 5 by having Ss choose whether to "gamble" on the accuracy of their prediction or on the outcome of a simple aleatory event. In social prediction, as in other judgmental domains, Ss were highly overconfident. Regardless of the type of prediction item (e.g., responses to hypothetical dilemmas) and regardless of the type of information available about the person whose responses they were predicting (e.g., predictions about roommates), Ss' accuracy levels fell below levels required to justify their confidence levels. Analysis revealed 2 sources of overconfidence. Ss generally were overconfident to the extent that they were highly confident. Also, Ss were most likely to be overconfident when they knowingly or unknowingly made predictions that ran counter to the relevant response base rates and, as a consequence, achieved low accuracy rates that their confidence estimates failed to anticipate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Variables influencing judgments of correlational relations.

Investigated the effects of 3 variables on 72 undergraduates' ability to assess correlational relations. These variables were (a) the form in which the stimulus information was presented (i.e., in continuous or binary form), (b) the actual magnitude of the correlation presented in the stimulus information, and (c) the Ss' expectancy concerning the relation in question. Ss judged the correlation between pairs of variables on the basis of serially presented items describing instances of their co-occurrence. Both direct estimates of correlation and phi coefficients derived from frequency estimates were used as measures of perceived covariation. Results indicate that Ss' estimates of correlation were significantly influenced by all 3 factors. Ss' judgments were sensitive to the difference between high and low correlations in the stimulus information, but they reflected this difference to a greater extent when the information was presented in binary, rather than continuous, form. Also, Ss made higher estimates of correlation when they expected the variables to be correlated than when they did not expect them to be correlated. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactional approach to interpersonal attraction.

Believing they were exchanging attitude surveys with a stranger, 270 undergraduates of high or low self-esteem (Texas Social Behavior Inventory) were randomly assigned to 0, 50, or 100% attitude similarity conditions. They indicated on the Interpersonal Judgment Scale their attraction to the stranger and estimates of the stranger's probable attraction to them. Attitude similarity significantly affected Ss' attraction to the stranger and estimates of strangers' attraction to the S. Ss closely approximated predictions of D. Byrne and D. Nelson's (1965) formula in estimating attraction from the stranger. Moreover, attitude similarity influenced goodness of fit between formula predictions and attraction estimates and influenced assumptions about attraction reciprocity. Self-esteem did not influence attraction to the stranger or expected attraction from the stranger. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Person perception and self-awareness: Knowledge of influences on one's own judgments.

96 college students watched 50 short interviews and rated the interviewees' intelligence, friendliness, or deceptiveness, then later estimated how the interviewees' characteristics had influenced their judgments. Ss were moderately accurate at estimating the impact of characteristics on their judgments, with the mean correlation between the actual influence and their estimates being 42. To control for Ss' use of a priori theories of causation, observers who did not see interviews or make person-perception judgments estimated how these characteristics would have influenced their judgments. Ss' self-awareness remained even after controlling for observers' estimates of effects. Although Ss showed self-awareness, their beliefs about what influenced them were also shaped by a priori theories about what should have influenced them. Ss' degree of self-awareness varied with the person-perception judgments they had made and the characteristics they were assessing. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in students' perceptions of routine classroom events.

144 Ss (72 males and 72 females) in Grades 1–5, who differed in classroom adjustment (according to teachers' judgments), were presented with 3 written vignettes portraying inappropriate student behavior. Interviews probed Ss' predictions of their teacher's motivation and response to the 3 vignette characters. Results show that Ss' reports varied across vignettes and differed primarily by grade level. Older Ss' responses were more elaborated and differentiating. Younger Ss' constructs tended to be more global, emotional, and value-laden. Females evidenced a more elaborate understanding of their teacher's motivation and behavior than males. Nonproblem Ss' working knowledge of the classroom, including discussion of their teacher, the vignette characters, and their reaction to them, did not differ from that of Ss who had a range of difficulties in the classroom. Of the troublesome Ss, only those diagnosed as hyperactive were notable for their differential responses. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationships between sociotropic and autonomous personality styles and depressive realism in dysphoric and nondysphoric university students.

Examined the hypothesis that Ss' responses to depressive realism tasks are not only a function of mood state, but also a function of sociotropic and autonomous personality style. In the 1st experiment, 74 undergraduates who scored high or low on a measure of sociotropy and high or low on a measure of dysphoria were exposed to a depressive realism paradigm in which they engaged in dyadic interaction with a friend. Following the interaction, Ss' estimates of their performance were compared with the evaluations of their friend. In the 2nd experiment, 79 undergraduates who scored high or low on a measure of autonomy and high or low on dysphoria were exposed to a computerized success/failure task. The results across both experiments did not support the depressive realism hypothesis, in that the Ss' degree of realism, distortion and/or bias generally varied as a function of both personality style and mood state in the predicted directions. Implications of these findings for the depressive realism literature are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting judgment time from measures of psychological proximity.

Pathfinder networks are evaluated in terms of their ability to predict Ss' response time in category and size judgment tasks. For both tasks, pairwise proximities derived from the network representation of relatedness estimates predicted response times independently of the original relatedness estimates. These results indicate that Pathfinder proximities represent psychological proximity as measured by judgment time better than Ss' own estimates of relatedness. Pathfinder's predictive ability is derived from a focus on relatedness estimates from the more sensitive related end of the rating scale. Evidence supporting this account is presented, and an explanation for sensitivity differences among ratings is proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of positive and negative thinking on performance in an achievement situation.

To induce different types of thinking, 151 undergraduates were given either positive or negative self-referent statements about competence in either an achievement or a social interaction situation and were asked to recall an experience in which they had had the thoughts conveyed by these statements. They then completed an anagrams task that was described as a measure of intelligence and verbal ability. Before doing the anagrams, half the Ss in each condition predicted how well they might perform, whereas the other half performed the task without generating predictions. Negative thinkers tended to perform better than positive thinkers when either (a) Ss' thoughts were achievement-related and they did not predict their performance on the anagrams task before engaging in it, or (b) Ss' thoughts pertained to social relations and they did predict their performance on the anagrams task. In no case did positive thinking lead to significantly better performance than negative thinking. Results suggest that the effects of positive and negative thinking were mediated by the influence of these different types of thinking on the motivation to perform well on the achievement task. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perception of variability within in-groups and out-groups: Implications for the law of small numbers.

Hypothesized that an observer's tendency to generalize from the behavior of a specific group member to the group as a whole is proportional to the observer's perception of the group's homogeneity, at least when the observer lacks a clear preconception on the behavioral dimension witnessed. 95 undergraduates from 2 rival universities viewed target persons alleged to be students either at their own university or its rival. Each of 3 such target persons made a simple decision within a different decision scenario. After observing the decision made, each S made estimates of the percentage of people likely to make the same decision in the parent group. The results confirm the main predictions: (a) Percentage estimates tended to be consistent with the target person's decision; (b) the degree of consistency was greater for out-group than for in-group target persons; and (c) both of these effects were clearest for the decision scenario where Ss' preconceptions about the most likely decision were weakest. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of three predictors of an individual's memory performance: The individual's feeling of knowing versus the normative feeling of knowing versus base-rate item difficulty.

Compared the memory performance predictions of 168 undergraduates with normative item-difficulty predictions and with normative feeling-of-knowing (FOK) predictions. Ss attempted to recall the answers to general-information questions, made FOK judgments on nonrecalled items, and were subsequently administered a criterion test (relearning, perceptual identification, or 1 of 2 versions of recognition). Results indicate that, for predicting an S's criterion performance, the S's own FOK predictions were intermediate between 2 kinds of normative predictions: Ss' FOK predictions were more accurate than predictions derived from normative FOK ratings but were less accurate than predictions derived from base-rate item difficulty (normative probabilities of correct recall). Subsidiary analyses showed that factors other than unreliability were responsible for the partial inaccuracy of Ss' FOK. Possible ways to improve the accuracy of an individual's FOK predictions are discussed. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Naive attributors' attributions and predictions: What is informative and when is an effect an effect?

E. Borgida (see record 1979-13364-001) has questioned the extent to which the present authors' (1977) data indicate that people do not ignore consensus information when making predictions and attributions. This article takes issue with Borgida's summary of parts of the authors' work and with several of his arguments on grounds of precision and completeness. It is noted that D. Kahneman and A. Tversky's analyses (see record 1976-02325-001) of data in their lawyer–engineer study were generally underrepresentative of their Ss' behavior. A replication of Kahneman and Tversky's lawyer–engineer study, using all Ss' data, indicated that Ss did not ignore base-rate information for any of the 3 target cases described by Kahneman and Tversky. The authors conclude that their assertion that people do not ignore (though they may not use optimally) consensus information in predictions and attributions is consistent with the attribution and psychology-of-prediction literatures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in predicting memory performance: The effects of normative information and task experience.

Two experiments addressed the effects of task information and experience on younger and older adults' ability to predict their memory for words. The 1st study, which involved 36 women (aged 20–30 yrs) and 36 women (aged 65–75 yrs), examined the effects of normative task information on Ss' predictions for 30-word lists across 3 trials. The 2nd study, which involved 2 groups of men and women (128 Ss total; aged 19–30 yrs and 54–77 yrs), examined the effects of making predictions and recalling either an easy or a difficult word list prior to making predictions and recalling a moderately difficult word list. Results from both studies showed that task information and experience affected Ss' predictions and that elderly adults predicted their performance more accurately than did younger adults. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal focus and estimates of consensus: An examination of the false-consensus effect.

Examined one of the underlying mechanisms—people's causal attributions for their own behavior—of the "false-consensus effect" (the tendency to overestimate the commonness of one's own attitudes and behavior). It was hypothesized that when people view their responses as the result of external influences, they overestimate the commonness of those responses; when they see their behavior as stemming from their own personal characteristics or experiences, they make more unbiased estimates of consensus. Study 1 tested this notion by having 109 undergraduates make hypothetical behavioral choices and then manipulating their explanations for their choices. As predicted, Ss who were led to cite personal reasons for their choices made lower consensus estimates than Ss who either were led to cite situational reasons or were unconstrained in their explanations. This causal-focus manipulation also had significant effects on Ss' trait ratings of the kind of person who would choose each alternative. Study 2, with 20 undergraduates, extended these results by finding a significant correlation between the extent to which people perceive a false consensus for various issues and the extent to which those issues prompt situational explanations for one's responses. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of the causes of obesity and responsiveness to treatment.

Tested the predictions that (1) the principal attributional effect of a group behavioral self-control treatment for obesity would be to increase Ss' belief in their ability to lose weight and (2) the degree to which Ss perceived themselves to be personally and socially victimized by their weight difficulties would limit the potential success of treatment. 27 Ss (mean age 36.75 yrs) participated under diet treatment, diet plus behavior modification, or delayed-treatment control conditions. In accord with the predictions, the monitored diet plus behavioral self-control treatment was the most effective in promoting weight reduction, and the most powerful predictor of positive weight status at both posttreatment and 4-mo follow-up was Ss' perception that they had the ability to lose weight. Ss who felt personally and socially victimized lost less weight than those who did not. It is concluded that investigating more complex cognitive and motivational effects may hold some promise in describing how therapeutic change takes place as a result of the behavioral treatment of obesity. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correlates of employee reactions to performance appraisals and appraisal systems.

474 exempt employees in a research and development organization were surveyed regarding their opinions and perceptions of the appraisal process. After controlling for perceived favorability of the appraisal via multiple regression, Ss' opinions of the appraisal and appraisal system were positive to the extent they believed that (a) there was an opportunity to state their own side of the issues, (b) the factors on which they were evaluated were job relevant, and (c) objectives and plans were discussed. Contrary to predictions, reports of goal setting and discussion of plans and objectives did not moderate the relationship between perceived favorability of the appraisal and the opinions of the appraisal. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Base rates can affect individual predictions.

356 college students in 4 experiments learned base-rate information and then participated in a predictive social judgment task. In all experiments, predictive behavior was significantly affected by the relevant base rates. In Exp II, for example, Ss in a high base-rate condition were more likely to predict that a given student planned to enroll for further training than were Ss in a low base-rate condition. The base-rate variable had a greater influence than might have been anticipated from the Ss' confidence ratings or from their replies to a series of postexperimental questions concerning the cues they had relied on in formulating their predictions. Nonetheless, the base-rate data were substantially less influential than a Bayesian model would require. In contrast to D. Kahneman and A. Tversky's (1973) analysis, individuating information that reflected a high (vs low) degree of representativeness did not determine the magnitude of the base-rate effect. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preferences as expectation-driven inferences: Effects of affective expectations on affective experience.

Presents a model arguing that affect and emotion are often formed in an expectation-driven fashion. A pilot study and 2 experiments manipulated undergraduate Ss' affective expectations (e.g., how funny they expected a set of cartoons to be) and whether Ss' expectations were confirmed (e.g., whether the cartoons really were funny). When the value of a stimulus was consistent with an affective expectation, people formed evaluations relatively quickly. Even when the value of a stimulus was discrepant from an affective expectation, people sometimes assimilated the value of the stimulus to their expectations. Other times, such as when making a more fine-grained evaluation of the cartoons, people noticed that they were discrepant from their affective expectations. Under these conditions, people appeared to have more difficulty forming preferences. They took longer to evaluate and spent more time thinking about the cartoons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implementation of the IDEA by school psychologists: An exploratory study using the theory of Street-Level Bureaucracy.

Based on the theory of Street-Level Bureaucracy (SLB), this exploratory study examines implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by school psychologists. Ss were 6 school psychologists and their supervisors from 2 different school districts. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and case presentations. Ss' responses were coded and analyzed to determine patterns and themes present in the interview. The results revealed that when school psychologists experience conflict in their work, they develop coping strategies that interact with their professional behavior and the implementation of IDEA. Coping strategies, such as rationing services, routinizing practices, adjusting expectations of the role of a school psychologist from the ideal to the actual, and changing the law to fit the circumstances were all used. Although many of the predictions of SLB were confirmed, school psychologists were also found to rise above job demands and provide services to children and their parents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The utility of theories in intuitive statistics: The robustness of theory-based judgments.

Research on human judgment demonstrates that people's theories often bias their evaluation of evidence and suggests that people might be more accurate if they were unbiased by prior beliefs. In 2 studies using the covariation estimation problem and the t-test problem, judgments made by Ss who had potentially biasing prior information about data were compared to those made by Ss who were not biased by prior information. 265 undergraduates served as Ss in Study 1; 201 undergraduates were Ss in Study 2. The quality of the data was varied to present Ss with data that were either well-behaved or contaminated with outliers. In both studies, Ss' judgments approximated robust statistical measures rather than the conventional measures typically used as normative criteria. The usual biasing effects of prior beliefs were found, along with an advantage for Ss who had prior theories—even incorrect ones—over Ss who were completely "objective." Potentially biasing beliefs both enhanced Ss' sensitivity to the bulk of the data and reduced the influence atypical scores had on their estimates. Evidence is provided that this robustness results from the fact that prior theories make judgment problems more meaningful. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of academic performance pattern on assigned grade and predicted performance.

Investigated how individuals use information about a target student's past academic performance to evaluate that performance and to predict future performance. 12 linear and nonlinear performance sequences, each ostensibly representing the performance of a different 1st-, 6th-, or 12th-grade student, were judged by 70 undergraduates. Results indicate that although the target's final performance was an important determinant of Ss' responses, a simple recency model did not adequately account for the data. In addition, differences emerged between Ss' evaluations of the target's past performance and predictions of the target's future performance. Contrary to expectations, the target's grade level did not significantly influence evaluations or predictions. The importance of observers' reactions to nonlinear as well as linear performance patterns is discussed in the context of clarifying teacher expectancy effects. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)